Firecracker Read online

  Ben shook his head. “That could’ve been anyone.”

  “I don’t think just anyone carves with such ornate calligraphy.”

  “You may have a point. I’m sorry. I could give it back, but the lunch period is almost over. Perhaps you’d like to nominate someone for homecoming court instead. Because you’re here and all.”

  I hadn’t given the homecoming dance much thought. I didn’t care about any of that stuff. We didn’t have homecoming at Bristol. We instead had something called Boat Days. But I was interested in the concept of homecoming queen. It had nothing to do with dresses or dancing or feeling special on the inside and outside and all that worthless crap. Pretty much, I just wanted everyone in the school to understand that I was Astrid Krieger, for godssake. I wanted people to understand what that meant. A position of royalty seemed like a good first step.

  “Tell me,” I said, “this homecoming queen, does the title come with its own tiara?”

  He leaned back in his chair, barely bothering to look at me. “There’s a thing the queen wears on her head. Yeah.”

  “Platinum?”

  “I’m sure it’s plastic.”

  “I’m sure I could bring my own. And the throne? Do they just keep it at the front of the school and people move it around, or is there one in each classroom that the queen attends?”

  He wasn’t sure if I was serious or not. “Homecoming queen is just for the dance and the football game.”

  “Hmm . . . So, they can’t really issue edicts throughout the school year or anything?”

  “No.” He held his hand open. “It’s a dollar a nomination.”

  “Well, how much to ensure that I actually win?”

  He was a little bit troubled by the question. “I don’t know. It’ll just get you on the ballot. Five dollars. Twenty dollars. It goes into the dance fund, and anything above that goes to the extracurriculars. Did you know that there’s a literary magazine . . . ” I stopped listening and reached into my purse. There was a nice roll of bills about the size of my fist. I was positive it was enough.

  “That all sounds neat,” I said. “I would like five hundred nominations.”

  “Uh, all on you, or would you like to spread this out on anyone else?”

  I hadn’t really thought it through, but good deeds could be found anywhere.

  “It’s interesting,” I said to Ben. “It’s as if you already know about my challenge.” I might have been making things too hard for myself. I could do good and reap life’s rewards at the same time. But at that moment, I saw Melty and Mason. I turned back to Ben, perhaps a little too excited. “Yes!” I told him. “Spread it!”

  I walked over to Noah’s enemies and stood in their way. “Excuse me. Excuse me? Sirs?” I said. I must’ve sounded like a weirdo. No one under the age of fifty expects to be called “sir.” “So, I’ve been issued a challenge to do good things. Retribution for your crimes would be viewed by most as a very good deed.” I knew Dean Rein wouldn’t count it, but no one else needed to know that.

  This was just too much for Melty to understand. He grunted a kind of “Wheh?” They walked around me. Or at least they tried to, but I cut them off.

  “I know Noah, and I don’t want you to bother him. Okay?”

  Melty said, “Okay,” but he was smiling in a knowing way, and it did not sound like he meant it.

  I stuck my hand in my purse. In most states, you can only buy pepper spray that’s just ten percent the actual ingredient that causes pain. I find this unacceptable. If it’s legal, then it isn’t going to serve its purpose. A guy who lives on the sheep farm near Bristol had been getting me some really major stuff from Indonesia.

  “I’m very serious and you leave me no choice,” I said, spraying Melty in the face. It looked like it really hurt. I mean, bad. Melty yelled that it hurt like a “Jesus mother faaaaaaa.” That sounded about right.

  Mason’s eyes were wide with real terror. I have no idea how he would’ve described the pain had he been subjected to it like Melty. I almost wish I could’ve known because he would’ve probably described it visually, since he’s a painter. But I didn’t spray him. I had made a promise to Lucy. And I was someone who (as of about twenty minutes ago) always kept her promises. I held the pepper spray up to his face and he squinted and flinched, but he didn’t run away and I didn’t spray. I just said, “Pow.” And then I said, “Nothing. You don’t get sprayed. And now you owe me a favor.”

  Melty was running down the hall, blindly trying to find a bathroom or some other place of refuge. I yelled after him, “I’m Astrid Krieger. I would like to be your homecoming queen.”

  Ben was watching the whole thing. I think he took the job of student council president a little too seriously, even though like homecoming queen, it’s not a job with any sort of power. “There’s a zero tolerance policy on weapons in this school. If you’re caught, they’ll kick you out.”

  “Really? That would be amazing.” Unfortunately, I was never caught and strangely, even the people who hated me didn’t tell on me. In that way and many others, high school was a lot like prison.

  >>>>>>>>>>>>>

  I wasn’t sure if Noah would still want to walk me from my classes—I thought maybe he’d be embarrassed after the Melty-Mason incident—but when he met me outside my US History class, it made me happy. I felt like I did a pretty good thing for Noah. It wasn’t on the level of feeding poor children with cancer, but it was something. A piece of something that was going to be bigger. But I still had a lot more I needed to do for him.

  “Well,” I said.

  “Well, what?”

  “Those guys are never going to bother you again. Are you going to thank me?”

  “Am I going to thank you?” he asked with a tinge of disbelief.

  “Yeah. Did you see what I did just now?”

  Noah scrunched up his face and shuffled back a little, apparently uncomfortable.

  “You should thank me.” I handed him one of my business cards. Everyone should have business cards.

  He looked at it. He had no idea what he was supposed to do with it. “My home address is on the back,” I said. “Or if you get lost, just look for the biggest house. The biggest house ever. Be there at eight. I have a plan.”

  He didn’t say anything. He just kept looking at the card.

  ASTRID KRIEGER

  “I like to make business cards.”

  1 Great Cormorant Drive

  Cadorette Township, Connecticut

  (Please, no phone calls, email, or menus. Thank you.)

  Noah was supposed to come at eight, but I spotted him hovering around the driveway of the main house at about seven twenty.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “I had no idea how long it would take me to get to here.”

  I considered leaving him there for forty minutes (because he shouldn’t have assumed I had nothing to do with the early part of my evening), but I decided that would be lousy of me. “It’s this way to my room,” I said, leading him across the main lawn.

  “You really do live in a rocket ship,” he commented when we got there.

  “You didn’t believe me?” I closed the hatch behind him.

  “It’s not that I didn’t believe you. It’s just . . . people don’t normally live in rocket ships. This couldn’t be legal to own, could it?” Noah didn’t really know where to sit. Instead, he stood at this weird, hunched angle in order to avoid hitting his head.

  “Of course it’s illegal,” I said. “But everyone does it.”

  “Everyone owns a rocket ship and lives in it?”

  “It’s more common than you think.”

  “I’m sure you’re the only person in the world who does.”

  “What about astronauts?”

  “They technically don’t live in rocket ships while they�
��re in the world.”

  “You make an okay point.” I sat down on the bed and indicated that Noah should sit in the bucket seat next to the bed.

  I took a juice box out of the small refrigerator on the other side of the bed and squeezed the whole thing into my mouth until my cheeks were really big. Then I swallowed it in a single gulp. I fished around for the last drops by blowing the box up like a balloon, then squeezing it flat. This was a thing I did all the time. It’s pretty much the only way I drink things—at least things that are in box form. I probably would never have known that this was kind of weird if I hadn’t looked at Noah’s face just then.

  “You’ve seen me drink these at school,” I said.

  “I guess I hadn’t really watched the whole process.” He looked like he was staring at one of those optical illusions that you see on menus: Are you looking at a picture of a princess or an old woman or an old princess?

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I forgot to ask you if you wanted one.”

  “I think I’m off juice . . . ” he said.

  “It’s not disgusting. I promise. They actually stopped making this flavor, and what’s in my refrigerator might actually be the last of its kind in the entire world. I have no idea why more people wouldn’t want limeade in a box. I’m much happier to have it all to myself.”

  “I think we’re all happier this way,” he said.

  “Look,” I said. “About today. I helped you out. And I’m glad I did. But now I need something from you.”

  Noah tilted his head back and looked skyward. Then he took his wallet out of his back pocket. It was Velcro and made out of parachute material. Really? I thought. And you’re not nine years old? He pulled out a small collection of crumpled bills. “I don’t have a lot of money or anything. I just carry a few bucks.” He handed them over and I instinctively grabbed for them (it’s hard to change who you are), but then I let go.

  “I don’t need any money. That’s not what I meant.”

  “No, it’s fair. Fifteen bucks per spray per face. That’s thirty dollars total.”

  “What I need is—”

  “I’m gonna stop you there, Astrid. It’s all I have on me. And frankly, it’s all I’m willing to pay you.”

  “No. You’re not getting it. This is what I need: I need you to let me fix you,” I said.

  “Fix me?” He looked at me to make sure he heard me right. “Wow. Thanks.” He didn’t say this like you would if someone gave you a birthday present and you’re pretending you don’t want it when you actually do. He said it like you would if you really didn’t want the birthday present. Like, if it wasn’t a present at all. Just a box full of cat skulls.

  “I think I can really help you.”

  “Why do I need help?”

  “Why? I mean, it’s pretty obvious. You see yourself, right?” I pointed to the mirror on my desk area. “Sociopaths hit you in the head. I saw it happen. And you don’t do anything. Nothing.”

  “Why do you think I do nothing?”

  “Are you scared?”

  “No. I’m not scared. I just refuse. If you hit back, it gets worse. And then you never stop fighting.”

  “You can’t be like you forever,” I said. “There’s going to be something worth fighting for and then you won’t even know what to do.”

  He said, “Yeah, but you can’t be like you forever either. Someday, you’re going to have to stop fighting everyone.” I had thought he would pretty much be in favor of whatever I wanted him to do, but he didn’t even let me tell him what that was. I was offering to fix him, and I was pretty much expecting him to say, “Yes!”

  I even pictured him doing one of those scenes you see in movies, where the dopey but amiable protagonist tries on outfit after outfit in a clothing store, and after, like, the first fifteen times he walks out of the dressing room, I shake my head. But then the last time I nod and give him a thumbs-up. We were going to do that. In real life.

  Instead, he told me that he didn’t want me to fix him and that I was the one who needed to be fixed. It’s kind of funny because him just saying that proved that I had already changed a little bit. If someone said to me a few months before, “You can’t be like you forever,” I would have given him a permanent click in his jaw. But maybe it was the way Noah said it. He wasn’t trying to say the meanest thing he could think of. He was matter-of-fact and unemotional about it, like he was telling me some sort of stupid fact about penguins or something. Like he was offhandedly mentioning that a penguin’s stomach will explode if it eats just one cashew nut. (Don’t quote me on that. It’s probably not a true fact.)

  I didn’t feel angry, like I normally would if someone said anything critical about me. Instead, I realized he was right. “Yup, that’s true. I can’t be like this forever.”

  “Have you considered the possibility that I don’t do anything to change myself because I don’t want to do anything?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “I have not considered that.”

  Noah smiled and relaxed a little bit. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t mean to say that in a bad way. I was just saying that you’re looking at me, and you see someone who lets things happen to him, right?”

  “Well, yeah. And I also see someone who dresses like he runs an illegal dice game out of a car wash in 1974 and his name is something like ‘Frankie the Weasel.’”

  “That’s very specific.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it all week.”

  “Okay,” he said. “But all that, who I am and what I look like—that’s a choice. It’s my choice. And no, it may not always be the best choice. But . . . but I look at you and then I see . . . I don’t know.”

  “What? What do you see when you look at me? I can take it, you know,” I went on after he hesitated. “I’m not a particularly sensitive person or anything. I’m not going to cry.”

  “I know. I wasn’t saying that you’re sensitive. In fact, I know you’re not.”

  “Well, let’s not get carried away. I could be more sensitive than you think. I’m not, but it’s possible.”

  “The thing is, I look at you and I just have no idea at all. I’ve been trying to figure you out. But I can’t. You know how when we were in the nurse’s office and I said I’d heard about you before? It wasn’t . . . I heard you got in trouble a lot, but I didn’t hear you were mean or anything.”

  “But I am mean,” I said.

  Noah smiled, which was a weird reaction to someone insisting they’re mean.

  “I am mean,” I said again. “I’ll prove it. Guess what? You’re going to probably be bald someday.”

  “Probably. All of my grandparents are bald. I have a bald grandma. She wears bright orange wigs.”

  “I can do better than that,” I told him.

  “But I know there’s more to you, Astrid,” he said. “I know when I look at you. I can tell when you ask me a question that you’re waiting to hear what I have to say. Most people just wait for their turn to speak.”

  “Really? What would give you the impression I’m not like most people?”

  “You are certainly not most people. When have you ever waited your turn to do anything?”

  And then the night felt easy. We sat on top of the nose of the rocket under the stars, so it looked like we were in the middle of space and about to die because you can’t sit on top of a rocket ship in space in your regular clothes. I didn’t usually like to tell people much about myself. (This, you have to understand, was before I decided to write a whole stupid book where I have so far done nothing but tell people about myself.) I talked about Bristol and Dean Rein and therapy and why I had to go to Cadorette, all the way up to Dean Rein’s challenge to do good things. Finally I explained why I thought that fixing Noah would be a good thing. When I was finished, I thought about how weird the whole challenge must have sounded out loud. I was sure Noah was
like all the other people who didn’t have to think about doing good things. It just sort of came to them as naturally as walking and having lunch.

  When I finished, though, he didn’t ask about the challenge. He was interested in something else entirely. “Why would you want to go back to Bristol?” he wanted to know.

  “What do you mean?” I thought it was pretty obvious, but maybe it wasn’t if you were used to schools like Cadorette, where the textbooks were covered in gum and bathroom walls listed which girls had the biggest breasts—in 1987. The map in my social studies class only had forty-eight states. “Cadorette Township High School’s a dump,” I said.

  “Yeah. I mean, I’m not saying I like it there either, but what’s so great about the old place? Other than all the rich people?”

  I tried to put it into terms he could understand. “You know how in the Harry Potter movies where he has all of these magic powers at his magic school, but if he wasn’t at his magic school, he wouldn’t have the powers anymore?”

  “That’s not actually how Harry Potter works. He always has the—”

  “I really don’t care. That’s not the point. The point is what you’re seeing right here. This Astrid Krieger you see in front of you . . . she’s not me. I’m much different than what you’ve seen. I’m just . . . I’m usually very powerful.” This was a hard idea for him to wrap his head around, but he didn’t ask any follow-up questions about the Bristol Astrid vs. the current Astrid. Maybe he found me pretty powerful already, and he didn’t need any convincing. After all, he had come all the way out to my house without me having to coerce him.

  “I will have a juice, after all. Unless you have water,” he said.

  I handed him a juice box. “Water doesn’t taste like anything,” I said.

  He drank it slowly, missing the point of the juice box entirely. When he was done, he got around to what he was trying to say the whole time. “I think I understand. I understand you want to be powerful. But we only have about six months left of high school.”